Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday December 23, 2010 @10:46AM
from the wouldn't-wanna-live-there dept.

Phoghat writes "A new batch of images has been released by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissaince Orbiter and as usual they are stunning. In the first image, there is a lot going on! Numerous dust devil tracks have left criss cross marks. The second is an image of what could have been a once habitable lake. There are more, including a possible future landing site."

I've been wondering lately what sort of discovery would we have to make to make travel to Mars a priority at NASA. I don't mean robotic probes. I mean a full fledged manned expedition. Maybe it's the pessimist in me, but I don't see anything short of finding an artifact of an extraterrestrial culture making us want to get our ass to Mars.

(Extraterrestrial: beyond Earth, not Extrasolar. I'm not saying aliens from another galaxy, but perhaps an ancient Martian civilization.)

Instead whats going to get us moving is getting it to the point that its cheaper. Hopefully with the albatross of the shuttle no longer around NASA's neck we'll create an infrastructure that makes it (relatively) easy to go anywhere in the solar system. Cheap transport to orbit, orbiting fuel depots and built-in-space spaceships that never enter the Earth's atmosphere -- sustainable exploration. Hopefully the administrations proposed NASA budget will get us to that point, even after congress got done with it. Only external geopolitics will up the NASA budget above $20B (in 2010 dollars) again, so if its going to happen in the mid-term future without hoping for a cold war, it has to be done this way.

I've been wondering lately what sort of discovery would we have to make to make travel to Mars a priority at NASA. I don't mean robotic probes. I mean a full fledged manned expedition.

My suspicion would be some sort of mass conversion to something like Sharia Law. This would be the only way to explain the twin regressions we would have to undergo as a species for that event to take place - firstly, to regress to speaking/thinking of human space travel as manned space travel, and secondly, and more fundamentally, a regression in our technological outlook such that we imagine we lived 100 years ago - before the age of robotics. From an objective standpoint robots are so superior at space

Amazing, indeed. Amazingly photoshopped, with more kohl and false colours than a Soho gal. I don't know about others, but I am more impressed when pictures haven't been exaggerated, so what I'm impressed with is what I see and not the artistry and what the publishers want us to see.

As for "could have been a once habitable lake", that's a rather meaningless statement. The area behind your house could have been an ancient burial site too. Speculation with very little to go on isn't very fruitful, except c

"“Holden crater has some of the best-exposed lake deposits and ancient megabreccia known on Mars,” said HiRISE’s principal investigator, professor Alfred McEwen of the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. ”Both contain minerals that formed in the presence of water and mark potentially habitable environments. [...]“"

What does "potentially" mean? It's a weasel word. Again, your back yard is "potentially" an ancient burial site.

By all means, investigate whether it was or was not, but don't publicly launch speculation to fuel interest before you either know or know that you can't know. That's the scientific equivalent of karma whoring.

The same NASA that desperately needs funding, and must fight to survive in a publish or die world?

Sorry for not taking everything NASA Mk II publishes at face value. Especially not when heavily photoshopped pictures are accompanied by weasel words like "could" and "potentially", but without a single theory.

1) These images are not photoshopped (at least not the ones on uahirise.org). If you knew anything about remote sensing, CCD sensors, image processing, or science, you'd know that.http://www.uahirise.org/pdf/color-products.pdf [uahirise.org]

2) Press releases do absolutely nothing for scientists except get their work out to the public. In a "publish or die" world, press releases are absolutely worthless. In a "publish or die" world, peer-reviewed work is publishing.

1) These images are not photoshopped (at least not the ones on uahirise.org). If you knew anything about remote sensing, CCD sensors, image processing, or science, you'd know that.http://www.uahirise.org/pdf/color-products.pdf [uahirise.org] [uahirise.org]

Have you actually read that PDF?

(My emphasis)

"PSP_005000_1000_RGB.NOMAP.JP2 3-color image consisting of RED, BG, and synthetic blue images. The BG image has been warped to line up with the RED.NOMAP image. The BG (blue-green) bandpass primarily accepts green light. The synthetic blue image digital numbers (DNs) consist of the BG image DN multiplied by 2 minus 30% of the RED image DN for each pixel. This is not unique data, but provides a moreappealing way to display the color variations present in just two bandpasses, RED and BG."

"For the Extras products, each color band is individually stretched to maximize contrast, so the colors are enhanced differently for each image based on the color and brightness of each scene. Scenes with dark shadows and bright sunlit slopes or with both bright and dark materials are stretched less, so the colors are less enhanced than is the case over bland scenes."

Whether one uses Photoshop or other software to enhance images to become more pleasing or effectful, it's generally called photoshopping.

Mars may look rather dull compared to Earth, and there's not much light there. But I'd much rather see things as they are, and the IR imagery displayed separately (preferably as black/white, as is traditional as it doesn't give any false impressions that it's visible light). That would be much more impressing than artificial colour "enhancements" and contrast stretching individual colour bands to make the images appear more colourful.

In many ways, exaggerating space images that are already impressive because they are from space to make more of an impact on the public isn't much different from photoshopping people to make their eyes bluer, lips redder, teeth whiter, and wrinkles less visible.

No shit, data are processed? Did you pathetic little troll actually do anything remotely related to science once in your life, or do you think sleeping through CS101 makes you a scientist? And what the flaming fuck is with the mods rewarding this drivel with insightful mods?

"PSP_005000_1000_RGB.NOMAP.JP2 3-color image consisting of RED, BG, and synthetic blue images. The BG image has been warped to line up with the RED.NOMAP image. The BG (blue-green) bandpass primarily accepts green light. The synthetic blue image digital numbers (DNs) consist of the BG image DN multiplied by 2 minus 30% of the RED image DN for each pixel. This is not unique data, but provides a moreappealing way to display the color variations present in just two bandpasses, RED and BG."

"For the Extras products, each color band is individually stretched to maximize contrast, so the colors are enhanced differently for each image based on the color and brightness of each scene. Scenes with dark shadows and bright sunlit slopes or with both bright and dark materials are stretched less, so the colors are less enhanced than is the case over bland scenes."

Whether one uses Photoshop or other software to enhance images to become more pleasing or effectful, it's generally called photoshopping.

Mars may look rather dull compared to Earth, and there's not much light there. But I'd much rather see things as they are, and the IR imagery displayed separately (preferably as black/white, as is traditional as it doesn't give any false impressions that it's visible light). That would be much more impressing than artificial colour "enhancements" and contrast stretching individual colour bands to make the images appear more colourful.

In many ways, exaggerating space images that are already impressive because they are from space to make more of an impact on the public isn't much different from photoshopping people to make their eyes bluer, lips redder, teeth whiter, and wrinkles less visible.

You CANNOT "see things as they are" with the HiRISE images.

1) Does your monitor display Infrared?2) Does your monitor display "red" with the same bandpass that the HiRISE detectors are sensitive to?3) Does your monitor display the bluegreen that HiRISE is sensitive to?4) Are your eyes sensitive, in the same way as the HiRISE detectors, to the same bandpasses as the HiRISE detectors?

No.

5) It simply isn't "traditional" to show IR or other non-visible wavelength data as a separate grayscale image. Take a look

The purpose of these pictures is to actually LEARN something about Mars. They are not 'my vacation on Mars' snapshots. Learning something means that the photos need to show details, even subtle ones. Details require contrast (in all photos, not just space pictures). Your choices for getting good contrast are either a) adjust the lighting, or b) adjust the image. Option A works great in a photo studio, or even outdoors with proper fill lights and reflectors. It is not an option at all in space. So tha

The use of color to indicate variances in terrain elevation is common.

The use of false color to indicate areas of differing surface chemistry and elements is common in remote imaging.

Whitening teeth, reddening lips and smoothing out wrinkles of celebrity pictures is also common.

I'm interested in what Mars is like, not in how impressive pictures of Mars can appear after a session through lightroom-on-steroids.Perhaps especially because this may affect how our money is spent. If a team studying Mars provides more impressive pictures than one studying Mercury, and increases its chances of future funding by creating a public bias, that's just plain wrong, and may lead to an arms race where

The problem is that human eyes and minds aren't well-equipped for appreciating what they see on Mars.

Just as someone who grows up in a uniracial environment might have trouble distinguishing faces of people with unfamiliar features, we don't appreciate Mars because we don't see it in an appropriate manner.

Appropriate enhancement is a tool to convey information in a useful manner, not (just) marketing.

(For a work of fiction providing a very different perspective on a similar problem, consider whether the hig

You just cannot seem to get away from the nose in the air attitude towards the use of color to convey information, can you?

Oh, I have no problem with blatantly false colour used to convey information. But when the extra information is modified to blend in with the image and look "natural", I have a big issue with it.

Why? Because it (a) misleads the masses into believing it really looks that way (which can be seen from several posts here), and (b) reduces information, as you can't tell what is part of the visible spectrum and what's not.With blatantly false colours for the non-visible parts of the EM spectrum (or a second mono

Not 100% true. I've had only one article on the front page so I certainly can't speak for all. However the link I provided in my submission was to Engadget. The link that was published was to some site in the UK. They also added / changed some sentences that garbled the intent so much that it became confusing. I WISH they would only publish what the user submitted (maybe correcting a typo or two).

and lazy. You'd think the role of an "editor" would be to optimize the user-submitted content. You'd think they'd check the spelling, make sure the links worked and pointed to useful stuff, check for duplicates, READ THE FUCKING SUBMISSION, etc. But they don't. They just wipe the drool off their chins and randomly mash "ACCEPT" to a few submissions each day.

Who do you think submits these stories? (mostly) Other people who write them.What do you think happens when Slashdot pisses off the other people posting these stories?They go away and Slashdot loses hits / possible revenue from story deals / a lot of content.Either way, all of those sound bad.

And very rarely does that gap get filled with other people. It has happened on loads of other sites where a bunch of the original fanbase have left, the site is left is a cesspit of a mess. (4chan*, YTMND, Youtube*,

Yet, with our sister planet too harsh for us, and anything farther away being even more inhospitable, it's the only rockball we have for fueling our dreams of visiting at present. So we gaiamorphise Mars, and pretend it's more Earth-like than it is.

Yet, with our sister planet too harsh for us, and anything farther away being even more inhospitable, it's the only rockball we have for fueling our dreams of visiting at present. So we gaiamorphise Mars, and pretend it's more Earth-like than it is.

Its easy. Just move all that carbon dioxide from Venus to Mars. Problem solved.